"CAIRO, Nov 24 2012 (IPS) - When Mohamed Mursi
was sworn in as president in June there were concerns that the first
democratically elected president in Egyptian history would be subservient to the
military council that had ruled the country since dictator Hosni Mubarak was
toppled in early 2011.But by August, Mursi had pulled off a political
coup, issuing a decree that purged the military of its leadership and left him
in sole control of the government, with full executive and legislative
authority. A decree issued Thursday expanded Mursi’s power even further, putting
his decisions beyond dispute and neutralising the judiciary that was one of the
last institutions challenging his Islamist government.

“Not since the days of the pharaohs has an Egyptian leader amassed so much
power,” says Ahmed Hamid, an activist protesting in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “Even
Mubarak never dared to go this far, and you saw what happened to him.”......

Nathan J. Brown, an expert on Egyptian law and politics at George Washington
University, interpreted the underlying message: “I, Mursi, am all powerful. And
in my first act as being all powerful, I declare myself more powerful still. But
don’t worry – it’s just for a little while.” (END)"

"(Reuters) - Youths clashed with police in Cairo on Saturday as protests at new
powers assumed by President Mohamed Mursi stretched into a second day,
confronting Egypt with a crisis that has exposed the split between newly
empowered Islamists and their opponents.
A handful of hardcore activists hurling rocks battled riot police in the
streets near Tahrir Square, where several thousand protesters massed on Friday
to demonstrate against a decree that has rallied opposition ranks against
Mursi.
Following a day of violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the
smell of teargas hung over the square, the heart of the uprising that swept
Hosni Mubarak from power in February 2011.More than 300 people were injured on Friday. Offices of the Muslim
Brotherhood, which propelled Mursi to power, were attacked in at least three
cities.
Egypt's highest judicial authority said the decree marked an "unprecedented
attack" on the independence of the judiciary, the state news agency
reported.
Leftist, liberal and socialist parties have called for an open-ended sit-in
with the aim of "toppling" the decree which has also drawn statements of concern
from the United States and the European Union......."

Friday, November 23, 2012

"CAIRO: Egyptian activists have announced they would remain in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square until President Mohamed Morsi withdraws his presidential decree that
ostensibly grants him unlimited power.
The National Assembly for Change has urged other political groups, parties
and movements, to join the sit-in in Tahrir as a show of force against what they
called a power grab that places Morsi above the rule of law.
Around a dozen tents have been erected in the center of the square by early
morning Saturday and protesters appear determined to push on with their
demonstration until Morsi makes changes.
The Assembly said it is disappointed by the recent moves made by Morsi
concerning the drafting of the constitution and said they would not stand by and
allow the president to take as much power as ousted President Hosni Mubarak had
until he was ousted in a popular uprising in January 2011.
Day of Rage turns to day of clashes
Over 170 Egyptian protesters have been injured in ongoing violence in
downtown Cairo on Qasr el-Aini street leading to the iconic Tahrir Square, the
ministry of health reported.
Activists and field hospital officials believe the number to be dramatically
higher.
According to volunteer doctors at field hospitals scattered around the
frontlines, the injuries consist mainly of tear gas inhalation, however many of
those being wounded have “been shot by rubber bullets.”
The violence, which is the continuation of the previous four days, increased
in dramatic fashion on Friday afternoon, following anger over President Mohamed
Morsi’s constitutional declarations that activists say has left the country in
the hands of the ultra-conservatives and silences those who fought for freedom
during the January 2011 uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak.
According to the ministry of interior’s Facebook page, Minister Ahmed Ibrahim
reportedly ordered police officers to be “patient” and “to work” with the
different revolutionary powers. He also said on state television that no tear
gas had been fired into Tahrir Square, where tens of thousands have gathered
into the evening, saying they will not leave and have begun an open-ended sit-in
demanding change in the country.
The ministry said that police arrested 210 protesters, 85 of whom were
transferred to the prosecution’s office and are being held pending investigation
for 15 days, and 45 under aged youth were released and had been given to the
custody of their parents.
Morsi, for his part, spoke to the nation on Friday afternoon as violence
spiraled into chaos in downtown Cairo, telling the country that “thugs” were
responsible for the violence. State television also reported that nobody was in
Tahrir Square, which online activists said was the same tactic used by the
Mubarak government on January 25, 2011, when protests that eventually ousted him
from power erupted.
Many believe this could be the beginning of a second uprising that is already
demanding the end of Morsi’s rule.
Both makeshift hospitals inside al-Dobarah church and Tal’at Harb street both
confirmed the arrival of people shot with rubber bullets. doctors said following
an early evening attack that Bikyamasr.com saw 8 protesters arrive with rubber
bullet wounds near Qasr el-Aini street, while doctors in Tala’at Harb said about
7 cases were reported......."

"Syrian rebels' success in seizing three military bases in less than a week
has underscored the growing difficulty faced by Damascus in securing its
outposts and stopping a rebel encroachment that has claimed large swaths of the
east and north of the country.

Attacks on the bases, one
north-east of Aleppo, a second at Mayedin in the far east and a third near
Damascus, yielded a large number of weapons, which had been in desperately short
supply, especially in positions across Syria's second city.

The impact of the new weapons seemed to have been felt immediately along
northern frontlines, where Kurdish groups loyal to the Assad regime were on
Friday engaged in their heaviest clashes yet with rebel forces and jihadists,
near the border town of Ras al-Ain....."

Clashes erupt while the
president justifies granting himself sweeping powers as necessary to defend the
revolution.

"Supporters and opponents of Egypt's president have clashed in several cities
after he assumed sweeping new powers, a clear show of the deepening polarisation
plaguing the country.

In the largest rally on Friday, thousands of chanting protesters packed
Cairo's Tahrir Square, the heart of the 2011 revolution, demanding Mohamed Morsi
quit and accusing him of launching a "coup".

Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating a truce between Hamas
and Israel, Morsi on Thursday issued a declaration giving himself powers that go
beyond those held by toppled president Hosni Mubarak, putting himself above the
judiciary.

He also ordered that an Islamist-dominated assembly writing the new
constitution could not be dissolved by legal challenges.
Liberal and secular members earlier walked out of the body, charging it would
impose strict Islamic practices......"

22 November 2012

".....Mark Regev, Israel's chief propagandist, seemingly has a place reserved for
him near the top of BBC news bulletins. In 2010, when I pointed this out to Fran
Unsworth, now elevated to director of news, she strongly objected to the
description of Regev as a propagandist, adding, "It's not our job to go out and
appoint the Palestinean spokesperson".

With similar logic, Unsworth's predecessor, Helen Boaden, described the BBC's
reporting of the criminal carnage in Iraq as based on the "fact that Bush has
tried to export democracy and human rights to Iraq". To prove her point, Boaden
supplied six A4 pages of verifiable lies from Bush and Tony Blair. That
ventriloquism is not journalism seemed not to occur to either woman.

What has changed at the BBC is the arrival of the cult of the corporate
manager. George Entwistle, the briefly-appointed director general who said he
knew nothing about Newsnight's false accusations of child abuse against a Tory
grandee, is to receive £450,000 of public money for agreeing to resign before he
was sacked: the corporate way. This and the preceding Jimmy Savile scandal might
have been scripted for the Daily Mail and the Murdoch press whose self-serving
hatred of the BBC has long provided the corporation with its "embattled" façade
as the guardian of "public service broadcasting". Understanding the BBC as a
pre-eminent state propagandist and censor by omission - more often than not in
tune with its right-wing enemies - is on no public agenda and it ought to
be."

"The reaction of post-revolution Egypt to Israel's weeklong onslaught on the
next-door Gaza Strip – brought to a halt temporarily at least by a Wednesday
night ceasefire – has contrasted sharply with the former regime's callous
approach to the besieged coastal enclave.....

Notably, Mursi has also shifted Egyptian support from the Palestinian Fatah
movement, which leads the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, to Hamas in
Gaza.

“Egypt now supports Hamas, to which the Brotherhood is affiliated
ideologically and which espouses a strategy of armed resistance,” said Fahmi.
“The Mubarak regime had supported Hamas’s bitter rival Fatah, which had insisted
on holding fruitless ‘peace talks’ with Israel that utterly failed to improve
the Palestinians’ position.”

Egyptian support for the people of Gaza – and the resistance based there –
has hardly been confined to official circles......"

"....."It was a horrible nightmare," says Dr. Mona El-Farra, director of Gaza
Projects for the Middle East Children’s Alliance. "Everywhere we were surrounded
with death and horror."......

The destruction of Gaza is severe. Dozens of houses, apartments blocks and
offices have been reduced to rubble. The Israeli military targeted numerous
civil institutions, including a main bridge on the coastal road connecting Gaza
City with the rest of the enclave, as well as several police stations, farms,
the Islamic National Bank, and a sprawling government compound housing
ministries that once issued identification cards, passports and other official
papers.

"In eight days the Israelis inflicted the same amount of destruction as they
did in twenty-two days in Cast Lead four years ago," Sourani says. "I think the
Israelis wanted to inflict pain and terror in the hearts and minds of the
civilian population.".....

"The Israeli talk about ceasefire is not true," El-Farra says. "They did not
talk about siege-lifting or lifting of the occupation. What they are really
talking about is freedom of movement between Gaza and Cairo. In the long-term I
am not optimistic."......

Yet one effect of the Israeli assault on Gaza has been to significantly boost
Hamas's popularity—which had been waning in the face of growing dissatisfaction
with their rule. "Their popularity is on a peak,” Sourani says. “There is
unprecedented, overwhelming support for them.".......

"People are resisting to by existing," says El-Farra. "There was strong
social solidarity during this attack. People were staying strong on the ground.
This was the real courage and steadfastness.""

"The big news this Thanksgiving holiday is the announcement of the Gaza
ceasefire. Will it last beyond the time you’re eating desert and trying to
recover from a massive Tryptophane overdose? Don’t be so sure….

The reason for this uncertainty is because Hamas comes out the winner, on all
fronts, and Netanyahu just as clearly the loser. What did the Israelis achieve?
Nothing. Hamas, on the other hand, secured growing international
recognition, as Arab state officials who had once snubbed Hamas trekked
to Gaza to show solidarity. More important, Hamas struck at Tel
Avivitself, taking the Israelis by surprise and showing they aren’t the
helpless victims the Israelis thought they were, an important factor in
mobilizing Arab public opinion......."

"....If we are learning anything from the latest round of woefully predictable
slaughter it is how a festering problem got worse, not better, during the Arab
spring......

....how Palestinians first introduced the notion of Arabs rising up against their
oppressors. The Arabic term "intifada" means "shaking off" or "uprising" and
first entered popular usage during the 1987 Palestinian rebellion against
Israel. It was as easily applicable to the Arab spring as it is to those living
in Gaza.

There are now signs of
change, however. Political leaders who replaced US-backed despots after the Arab
spring are openly supporting Hamas.....

It was also in 2008 that
Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni actually declared war on Gaza
from Cairo – a ruthlessly pragmatic gesture which infuriated the majority of
Egyptians. Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's new president, in
contrast, frantically stepped up diplomatic efforts to resolve the Gaza
crisis.

Terms of the ceasefire were necessarily restrictive and it is, of course, a
fragile truce. The crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel remains, for
example, and there are ongoing humanitarian concerns for the near 2 million
Palestinians living there....."

"This is a coup against
legitimacy. We call on all Egyptians to protest in all of Egypt's squares on
Friday," Sameh Ashour, head of the Egyptian Lawyers syndicate told a news
conference called with two of Morsi's prominent political opponents, Amr Moussa
and Mohamed ElBaradei.

Morsi, who was feted on the international stage for his key role in bringing
to an end the violence in Gaza, issued the decree on Thursday, which also
ordered the retrial of former president Hosni Mubarak and officials and security
force members accused of killing protesters during the country's revolution.
Although the ending of impunity for those who had committed crimes during the
ousting of Mubarak would be widely popular, opposition groups described other
new measures a as a power grab.
Presented as a move to "protect the revolution", the decree won immediate
praise from Morsi's allies but stoked fears among secular-minded Egyptians that
the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies aim to dominate the new Egypt......"

Ian Blackguardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 November 2012"No one is taking bets on
how solid the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians will prove to
be. But the Gaza conflict has highlighted one
apparently permanent change in the Middle East – the shrinking influence of Syria, stuck in a bloody and unstoppable
war.

If Mohamed Morsi, the
Egyptian president, is now basking in glory as the indispensable mediator
between Hamas and Israel, his counterpart in Damascus, Bashar al-Assad, looks distinctly like
yesterday's man.

Syrian state media focused intensely on Israel's onslaught against the
Palestinians in Gaza. But Assad's Arab critics have been doing some bleak
calculations: in the eight days of Operation Pillar of Defence 160 Palestinians
were killed by Israel. In the same period, Syrian forces killed 817 civilians
and injured thousands. Last Monday alone, says the opposition, 150 Syrians
died.
Al-Arabiya, the Saudi-owned TV channel, drove home the point about double
standards nicely by quoting an Israeli rabbi who publicly urged his army to
"learn from the Syrians how to slaughter and crush the enemy.".....

the neighbours have also been "the best of enemies." Israeli leaders
preferred Assad and his father Hafez as the "devils they knew" who kept the
peace on the Golan, a quiet front until the recent spillover from the uprising
and fears that chemical weapons might fall into the hands of rebels. Syria also
spent eight years negotiating with Israel, though they failed to reach
agreement.
But the country that used to describe itself as the "beating heart of
Arabism" has also been a leading member of the "axis of resistance" – an ally of
Iran and patron of Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hamas finally abandoned its
Damascus headquarters this year, unable to stand the contradiction between
demands for Palestinian freedom and the brutal suppression of the Syrian
uprising. In early November, the Syrian security authorities closed the Hamas
offices.
Khaled Meshal, its best known leader, is now an honoured guest in Egypt and
Qatar, Assad's sworn enemy. Hamas, though still shunned as a terrorist group by
the US, the EU and Israel, has far more respectable, and influential, Arab
friends than Assad these days.
Smaller Palestinian factions are still based in Damascus. One is the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine: General Command which claimed
responsibility for Wednesday's bus bombing in Tel Aviv. But Palestinians living
in Syria have suffered along with Syrians during the 20-month uprising.
Assad is preoccupied with his own survival. But he is not the only Arab
leader facing marginalisation. Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of
Hezbollah, has not had a good Gaza war either, praising Hamas but doing nothing
to help it – and drawing attention to the fact that his organisation has not
launched any of its thousands of missiles at Israel since the 2006 Lebanon
conflict. Nasrallah's "resistance" credentials have also been badly tarnished by
his support for Assad. Nasrallah may, some analysts believe, be keeping his
powder dry in case Israel attacks Iran.
Nearer to Gaza, another big loser is Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO leader and
president of the Ramallah-based Palestinian authority. Abbas's problem is not
new but has been exacerbated by a war against Israel in which his Islamist
rivals have, with a degree of plausibility, claimed victory.
It has also highlighted his irrelevance and exposed him to the charge that he
is simultaneously too close to Israel while failing to extract any concessions
from it.
It is all evidence that old Middle Eastern certainties are disappearing while
the precise shape of a new regional order has yet to emerge."

Thursday, November 22, 2012

As a result of the strategic defeat of Israel in its 8-day attempt to crush the Palestinians in Gaza, I was forced to make a major change in my thinking.

For years I was convinced that Israel would sooner or later attack Iran or force the US to do the same on its behalf.

Observing how steadfast the Palestinians were, with their limited armaments, against vastly superior USraeli onslaught, and how Israel was forced in the end to ask for a ceasefire, made me realize the impossibility of subduing the vastly larger and stronger Iran.

The Iranian technology is what made Palestinian rockets that reached Tel Aviv and beyond. Yet Iran has much more than what it supplied the Palestinians.

Do not be fooled by the Israeli propaganda about the effectiveness of the "Iron Dome." It is hogwash, just like the lies about the effectiveness of the Patriot missiles. Even if only half the missiles make it through, and Iran/Hizbullah launch tens of thousands in retaliation for an attack on Iran, the price that Israel would pay would be very high.

As a sign of confidence, Iran boasted that it supplied the missile technology to the Palestinians and was proud of it. It berated all the Arab countries for not doing anything tangible to help the Palestinians. This stance (contrasted with the cowardice of all the Arab regimes, Egypt included) speaks volumes about the strategic shift in the region.

The days are gone when Israel threatens and the Arabs or Iranians tremble. Technology is no longer a monopoly of USrael. Just imagine if the Palestinians had effective missiles against the Israeli air force; the Iranians certainly do.

"In a clear indication of Israel’s shocking callousness and disregard for
civilian lives, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon today told
PRI’s The Takeaway that most of those killed and injured in Israel’s eight
day long bombardment of the
Gaza Strip “deserved it.”
“If you compare the situation in Gaza to the situation in Syria today,”
Ayalon said, “where the Assad regime just mercilessly butchers people and
children there is a big difference and I would say that most of the
people that were hit in Gaza deserved it as they were just armed
terrorists.”

Vast majority killed and injured are civilians and children

But in fact, the vast majority of those killed and injured were
unarmed civilians. Up to 20
November, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 91 of the
136 Palestinians killed were civilians, including 28 children and 13 women, and
922 of the 941 wounded were civilians, including 258 children.
So 66 percent of those killed, and 97 percent of those injured were
civilians. Almost one third of the dead are children......"

"(Reuters) - Syrian rebels captured an army artillery base in the eastern oil
producing province of Deir al-Zor on Thursday, weakening President Bashar
al-Assad's control of the strategic region bordering Iraq,
several opposition sources said.
"The Mayadeen military base fell at 8.30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. Eastern Time)," Abu
Laila, an official in the Military Revolutionary Council in the province, told
Reuters. He said 44 rebel fighters had been killed in the siege of the
base.
"The whole countryside, from the Iraqi border and along the Euphrates to the
city of Deir al-Zor, is now under rebel control."
Another opposition source in contact with rebels confirmed that the base, 42
km (26 miles) south-east of the city of Deir al-Zor, had fallen.
The capture of the base follows that of a military airport 80 km (50 miles)
to the south-east on the Iraqi border last week. Rebels have stormed several
bases in the north and center of the country, indicating growing military
strength, according to opposition sources and diplomats......"

"Palestinians take to the streets of Gaza City on
Wednesday night, celebrating the ceasefire brokered in Egypt between Israel and
militant factions led by Hamas. The Hamas leader, Khalid Meshaal, says the truce
is a step towards a free Palestine, but warns they have the 'finger on the
trigger' should Israel violate the ceasefire."

"Outside the confines of an
Israeli election campaign, it is hard to see the last eight days of aerial
bombardment of Gaza as a tactical success. What
started from the Israeli defence establishment's view with a moment of elation –
the pinpoint strike on the car of Hamas's military commander
Ahmed al-Jaabari – ended with Hamas and other militant groups breaking two
taboos: firing rockets repeatedly at Tel Aviv (not even Hezbollah during the
height of the second Lebanon war did that); and returning to the tactic of
bombing buses. If the agreement
announced on Wednesday night holds, Hamas is hardly ceasing fire while in
full retreat.

Binyamin Netanyahu
and Ehud Barak now find themselves in a similar position to the one Ehud Olmert
and Tzipi Livni found themselves in at the end of Operation Cast Lead in 2008 –
struggling to pull something out of the rubble that justifies the decision to
attack in the first place. They will claim that they established deterrence
against the militant groups in Gaza for at least a couple of years. Hamas has
agreed to not fire rockets, detonate bombs or engage in any cross-border
activity, but all of that was on offer, and had been the subject of negotiations
through intermediaries, before Operation Pillar of Defence was launched.
Further, the agreement signed on Wednesday states that all crossings into Gaza –
presumably not just the Rafah border with Egypt but the ones on the
Israeli side as well – will be open to the movement of people and goods. In
other words, the siege of Gaza, which Israel fought so bitterly and
for so long to maintain, has just ended. The agreement refers to the fact that
procedures for implementation will be "dealt with" within 24 hours of the start
of the ceasefire. This was Hamas's central demand, and it appears to have been
met. Israeli negotiators had two demands: that the ceasefire last for a stated
minimal period of time and that a no-fire zone be established on the border.
Neither are in the agreement.

Strategically, the judgment
on the last week of war looks even worse. Look no further than what has been
happening all this week in the West Bank. In 2008, it was a mortuary and
Ramallah seemed to be on a different planet. Not a Palestinian voice dared to be
raised against the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza. Dissenters were swiftly
locked up by Palestinian policemen. This week, in contrast, the Palestinian
police have been strangely inactive. Demonstrations have erupted in major West
Bank cities, molotov cocktails have been thrown. On Wednesday both nationalist
and Islamic politicians called for a strike in the Hebron region. These are
scenes not witnessed since the end of the second intifada. Just as the final
link in the physical separation of Hamas in Gaza appears to have dissolved, so
the taboo on its political reappearance in the West Bank appears to have melted
away also. For the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, this is terrible news.
Unity between Fatah and Hamas is de facto being forged, despite his, America's,
and the Middle East Quartet's best efforts to exclude the Gazan militants from
the political process until they recognise the state of Israel. Wednesday night
ended with praise being showered by Israel and Hillary Clinton on the Muslim
Brotherhood president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi. They
have just cemented the international standing of a man whose chances they tried
their best to undermine five months ago.

Mr Netanyahu claimed that
he had crippled Hamas and in heeding the warnings about a ground incursion, he
will have cemented his western support. But that has been at the cost of
elevating Hamas's position in the Arab world. He has now done to the
organisation what he did to Khaled Meshaal, when he ordered his assassination by
poison and was then forced to supply Jordan with the antidote. Meshaal's
career was propelled as a result. In the same way, Hamas has been elevated into
the position of a contender for the leadership of the PLO. Is this what the
Israeli premier intended? Or has he just discovered the limits of the use of
force? Instead of trying to wipe Hamas out, perhaps Mr Netanyahu should try
talking to them."

"The commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary
Guards has publicly admitted that his forces supplied the Islamic militant group
Hamas with the knowhow to
develop Fajr-5 missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

"We haven't sent any
weapons to Gaza because it is under
blockade," Mohammad Ali Jafari was quoted as saying by Iran's Young Journalists
Club news agency on Wednesday. "But we are honoured to announce that we gave
them the technology of how to make Fajr-5 missiles and now they have their hands
on plenty of them."

Jafar's remarks are a rare admission by such a high profile regime official
that Tehran has supported Hamas militarily......"

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has entered its eighth day with the
Palestinian death toll now topping 139. More than 1,200 people have been
injured. Earlier today, 21 people were injured in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv
when a bomb exploded aboard a crowded bus. International efforts to secure a
ceasefire have so far been unsuccessful. We’re joined from Gaza City by
Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous....."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just arrived in Egypt where she will
hold talks with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi about a possible truce between
Hamas and Israel to end the Gaza conflict. Clinton has already met with
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. As efforts to secure a ceasefire continue, we host a debate on the
Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip with two guests: James Colbert, policy
director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; and Yousef
Munayyer, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund and its educational program,
The Palestine Center....."

A video by Mosireen
(website), the independent media and citizen
journalism collective born during the Egyptian revolution, shows the disturbing
and horrifying scenes in Gaza City’s main hospital amid the ongoing Israeli bombardment of
the Gaza Strip.
The video, titled “A Night in Gaza Under the Bombs,” was shot on 18 November,
the fifth day of the Israeli attack during the visit by 500 Egyptians in
solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza, who spent the night at al-Shifa
hospital.
The video contains some disturbing scenes, including severely injured and
dead children, and distressed family members. Medics speak about their struggle
to cope with the large flow of casualties amid shortages of medical supplies
that were already scarce before the Israeli attack began on 15 November.
At 2:15, the power can be seen going off in the hospital, an example of the
chronic electricity problems in Gaza......"

"The Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, a
town in the Galilee, has demanded that the adjacent city of Nazareth be declared
“hostile” to the state of Israel, and its predominantly Palestinian
population, who are citizens of Israel, be expelled to Gaza.
“If it was in my hands, I would evacuate from this city its residents the
haters of Israel whose rightful place is in Gaza and not here,” Mayor Shimon
Gapso wrote in a letter to Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

Gapso was angered by protests in Nazareth against Israel’s bombardment of
Gaza that has claimed more than 130 Palestinian lives since 15 November.
Calling Nazareth a “fifth column,” Gapso wrote that the city is “a danger in
times of peace and a real danger in times of war.” He demanded that Yishai
declare it a “hostile” city and cut off all state funding......"

As my Guardian colleague
Seumas Milne superbly detailed in
his column Tuesday night, the overarching fact of this conflict is that the
Palestinians, for decades now, have been brutally occupied, blockaded,
humiliated, deprived of the most basic human rights of statehood and autonomy
though the continuous application of brute, lawless force (for that reason,
those who like to righteously condemn Hamas' rockets (Pierce, defending Obama;
"he happened to be correct the other day. No country can tolerate the bombing of
its citizens") have the obligation to state what form of legitimate resistance
Palestinians have to all of this). Moreover, as these clear
numbers from the Economist demonstrate, the violence and carnage so
disproportionately harm the Palestinians that to suggest some form of
equivalence between the two sides borders on the obscene.

But the second reason, to me, is even clearer. The government which Americans
fund and elect, and for which they thus bear at least some responsibility, is
anything but neutral in this conflict. That government - certainly including the
Democratic Party - is categorically, uncritically, and unfailingly on the side
of Israel in every respect when it comes to violence and oppression against the
Palestinians......"

"Israel continues attacking Gaza for a seventh day on
Tuesday, killing 21 Palestinians, according to Gazan officials. Meanwhile a
rocket from Gaza destroys a building near Tel Aviv. Israeli prime minister
Binyamin Netanyahu says Israel would prefer a diplomatic solution. In New York,
officials show support for Israel. In Chile, hundreds march in support of
Palestinians."

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cowed the re-elected US president
and his domestic opposition with Operation Pillar of Defense and can say he's
degraded Hamas's war machine and weakened its threat. However, these appear
outweighed by the Iron Dome rocket defense being proven a myth and the fact that
Tel Aviv - wary of new regional realities - sued for peace just three days into
the offensive....."

"Bahrain is facing a stark choice between the rule of law, or sliding into a
downward spiral of repression and instability, Amnesty International warned in a
new briefing today.

The briefing Bahrain: reform shelved, repression
unleashed comes days before the first anniversary of a
landmark report by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), which
was established by the country’s authorities to investigate abuses during the
2011 anti-government protests.

The BICI report found the Bahraini
government responsible for gross human rights violations and documented
widespread abuses. It made a series of recommendations including calling on the
authorities to bring to account those responsible for human rights abuses and to
carry out independent investigations into allegations of torture and other
violations.

After BICI published its report in November 2011, the
government committed itself to implementing the recommendations.

But as
this briefing makes clear, instead of fulfilling this undertaking, the
authorities swiftly moved to entrench repression, culminating in October 2012 in
the banning of all rallies and gatherings in the country in violation of the
right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and in November with the
stripping of Bahraini nationality from 31 opposition figures.

“The scale
and nature of the violations unleashed in Bahrain since the BICI made its
recommendations are making a mockery of the reform process in the country,” said
Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty
International........"

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Watch this video and see Ali Abunimah really give it to Al-Jazeera.Al-Jazeera (English) has been pretty bad in covering the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. As Ali said, the Al-Jazeera "reports" often sound like the Israeli talking points.

"......Whatever the Israeli government's mix of motivations for winding up the past
week's conflict, it seems to have backfired. For the first time since the start
of the Arab uprisings, the cause of Palestine is again centre stage.

Emboldened by the wave of change and growing support across the region, Hamas
has also regained credibility as a resistance force, which had faded since 2009,
and strengthened its hand against an increasingly discredited Palestinian
Authority leadership in Ramallah. The deployment of longer-range rockets that
have now been shown to reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is also beginning to shift
what has been an overwhelmingly one-sided balance of deterrence.

The truce being negotiated on Tuesday would reportedly enforce Hamas
responsibility for policing the strip and crucially break the blockade, opening
the Rafah crossing with Egypt for goods as well as people. It doesn't, however,
look like the long-term security deal with Hamas Israel was looking for, which
would risk deepening the disastrous Palestinian split between Gaza and the West
Bank.

Any relief from the bombardment, death and suffering of the past week has got
to be welcome. But no ceasefire is going to prevent another eruption of
violence. Whatever is finally agreed won't end Israel's occupation and
colonisation of Palestinian land or halt its war of dispossession against the
Palestinian people. That demands unrelenting pressure on the western powers that
underwrite it to change course. But most of all, it needs a change in the
balance of forces on the ground."

".....Gaza again is a living hell, all of it on record for the world to see. The
death toll is climbing by the hour. The photos are everywhere but the New
York Times has only a paragraph on the fear Israeli children
experience from the loud noises and clamor. You have forgotten the other half of
humanity, Mr. Publisher. Not the other half, really; the other 9/10ths of the
world. When will you comment on the trauma the Gazan child experiences, and
repeatedly, with children across the world under the bombs of the United States
and Israel?

All the sounds and sights and smells of slaughter verify the damage and
danger of aerial assaults and targeted killings; Apartment buildings still
buzzing with human activity when missiles pierced through their ceilings offer
up their dead and wounded to the deafening skies. Progressive US President Barak
Obama and his allies applaud Israel’s masterful techniques of preventive war as
self-defense; its sophistication at using state of the art weaponry against
mosques, homes, markets and schools; re-emphasize at press conferences the right
of Israel to defend itself against the human cattle they have justly corralled
into densely packed camps to be bound and slaughtered or starved and transferred
elsewhere. All of it is happening again, today, before our very eyes; before the
universal documents proclaiming the rights of mankind and international
humanitarian law; before the leaders who have so eagerly abandoned due process
and civil liberties but fear the rising tide of rebellion in the Middle East and
elsewhere?How dare we pontificate on the atrocities of Damascus after
sponsoring such a Juggernaut for Jerusalem? For Gaza? What educated public can
still claim they didn’t know? How can anyone any longer pretend the earth was
not boiling beneath us like lava under an active volcano?"

Over the past week, Israeli strikes have killed at least 116 Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip, the majority of them civilians, including 27 children. Monday’s
victims included four members of the same family — two parents and their two
toddlers — who were killed in a bombing of a Gaza refugee camp that also left
more than a dozen people injured, mostly women and children. We go to Gaza to
speak with Dr. Mona El-Farra, director of Gaza Projects for the Middle East
Children’s Alliance and the Health Chair of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society
of the Gaza Strip. Dr. El-Farra writes about living under siege on her blog,
"From Gaza, with Love."....."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is heading to Jerusalem, Ramallah and
Cairo today as the Israeli attack on Gaza enters it seventh day. U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is also in the region after calling for an
immediate ceasefire and warning an Israeli ground operation in Gaza would be a
"dangerous escalation" that must be avoided. As ceasefire talks continue in
Cairo, Hamas has set two conditions for accepting a cease-fire: lifting the
military blockade on the Gaza Strip and international assurances that Israel
would stop assassinations and other military measures. We speak with Phyllis
Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies based in Washington, D.C....."

"Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip have continued for a seventh day, despite calls for a truce, with the overall death toll reaching 111, according to medical sources.

A media centre was targeted for a second time on Monday when Israeli fighter jets hit the Shuruq tower in Gaza City. The building houses Palestinian and international media outlets, including Britain's Sky News, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya and the official Hamas broadcaster, Al Aqsa TV.

A Palestinian man cleans up after a UN food distribution center was badly
damaged in an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza
Strip on 18 November.

"UNRWA, the UN agency
for Palestine refugees, has hit back at Israeli allegations, made through social
media, that it allows schools it runs in the Gaza Strip to be used by
Palestinian forces to launch rockets towards Israel.

“The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East (UNRWA) denies allegations made online by the IDF Spokesperson that
Palestinian militants are using UNRWA schools or facilities in Gaza to fire
rockets into Israel,” the agency said in a press release today.

The statement came on the seventh continuous day of Israeli bombardment of
the Gaza Strip, which has so far claimed 124
lives, more than two dozen of them children, and injured over 800
people......"

Gaza's victims

Haaretz's
Amira Hass writes that among the 34 Palestinians killed in Israel Defence
Forces attacks in the past two days, just six have been confirmed as members of
militant groups.

The victims include "farmers on their way to sell vegetables in the
marketplace, vendors of purified drinking water and people who just happened to
live too close to the targets of Israeli air strikes".
She writes that, since the start of the Israeli military operation, at least
58 civilians have been killed in Gaza, at least 18 of them children. Hass says
the figures have been gathered by gathered by the Palestinian Centre for Human
Rights, the al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights and medical sources in Gaza. She
writes:

At about 2am yesterday, the IAF (Israeli air force) fired warning rockets at
an empty home in the Zeitun neighborhood. The building exploded about a minute
later, trapping members of the neighboring Abu Zur family inside their home and
killing a 5-year-old boy, Mahmad Iyad Fuad Abu Zur, along with two men and a
woman: Ahad Hamdi Samil Katati, 38; Sahar Fadi Assad Abu Zur, 21; and Nasma
Halmi Salam Abu Zur, also 21.
Twenty-eight family members were injured in the attack and 20 homes were
partly damaged.
In addition to the nearly 100 Palestinians killed since Pillar of Defence
began, some 700 Palestinians have been wounded in that time, including at least
215 children.
An estimated 585 buildings have been damaged in the explosions, including 46
that were totally demolished, according to al-Mezan......